


oh don't you wonder when the light begins to fade?

by ninemoons42



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Chocobabes in cameo appearances, Fandom Trumps Hate, Gen, Inspired by Fanart, Inspired by Music, Inspired by Real Events, Inspired by Twitter, Memories, OT4 Friendship, Recovered Memories, Reincarnation, Second Chances, chocobros love, chocobros need love too, new game plus!, new quest received!, present-day Earth is several centuries in the future of Eos idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 10:02:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15749436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: A holiday at the seaside turns into -- Noctis remembering who he is, and remembering the ones he misses the most. (The ones he didn't even know he was missing.)





	oh don't you wonder when the light begins to fade?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DigitalMeowMix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DigitalMeowMix/gifts).



> Took me a while to get to this point, and I can only hope it's worth the long wait.
> 
> I joined Fandom Trumps Hate again this year, and again offered to write fic. (I'll be writing for everyone who bid in my FFXV auction.) The winning bidder for this particular story was [@digitalmeowmix](http://digitalmeowmix.tumblr.com/), who this time gave me a choice of several chocobros shippy and non-shippy ideas. I went with a story based on "those aren't your bodyguards; they're your brothers".
> 
> \- Twitter thread inspiration starting [here](https://twitter.com/meandmybigmouth/status/1031476453785919488)  
> \- Art inspiration by [@grossularlilium ](http://grossularlilium.tumblr.com/) can be found [here](http://grossularlilium.tumblr.com/post/170635954182/%EC%82%AC%EB%9E%91%ED%95%B4-%EC%96%98%EB%93%A4%EC%95%84%E3%85%8F)  
> \- Musical inspiration offered by dear @stopmopingstarthoping, which you can listen to [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooEv1cH97HA).

“Will everyone who signed up for the walking tour please join me over here, please and thank you,” and he looks up from a protracted study of the cobblestones at his feet, the crystalline-soft sand sweeping along in the quiet whispering breeze that doesn’t really do anything for the sweat in the collar of his shirt -- but he’s grateful for the wind, anyway, grateful for the gently protective clouds gathering in the bright blue sky. Clouds like towering skyscrapers of fluff, and it’s hard to imagine how much sky there is, if those clouds can be so tall and so massive and he wonders how much a cloud weighs.

Maybe he’s thinking like a child would -- but there’s no one here to look at him and figure that part out, right? 

He’s not even here sort of willingly. He’s worn out from the week of exams and papers and labwork and everything else that’s been thrown at him. It’s not really fair, he thinks; he’s been good at following the schedules, he’s been good at beating the deadlines, he’s been good at attending every single class on his timetable even though he’d rather be sleeping his mornings away. He’s been doing his homework. He’d even gone so far as to answer exercises ahead of time, and keep a list of ideas for reports and essays and other things so he doesn’t have to wear himself out, and -- he’s still worn out. Worn out and a little carsick and a whole lot thirsty, and he glances up to the head of the line and the person who’s calling out reminders and times and places for the walking tour is wearing a thick and heavy frock-coat-kind of thing in this weather and -- he feels a little sorry for them, really. It’s too warm and too nice a day for severe silver braid, for gloves and boots and -- is that some kind of sword, belted around their waist? 

What’s with all the song and dance anyway, he wonders.

Still, he tracks that person vaguely around the square, knowing he’s supposed to be on the tour himself, but -- he spots an ice cream cart parked beneath the awning of a coffee shop, only a few feet away, and he has to. He’ll die, otherwise, maybe not from the heat because it’s actually pleasant on his school-pale skin. More from the sheer boredom, the sheer clamoring craving in his stomach, the need for sugar.

The coffee shop is -- heaving with people and that’s almost a surprise, and it’s no surprise at all, but the real shock is when he’s accosted by a girl in a tartan-trimmed dress and a neat sports cap perched on her head. “What kind of coffee do you want?”

He blinks at her. “Something iced and sweet?” he hazards. “And a lot of it?”

She laughs, but maybe not at him. “Right, into the express line you go then.”

“Uh why.”

“If that’s all you want then you can get in and get out fast. Trying to catch the tour, right?”

“Yeah,” he says, and the girl grins and slaps him on his shoulder and he thinks he ought to stagger under the strength of her, the pure sunny brightness of her, and he makes sure to throw an extra handful of coins into the tip jar, after he picks up two of the standard-sized cups of iced coffee: and even the cubes are made of coffee, as he notices after he opens the first one and tries to crunch on a stray chip of ice -- and instead of water, the same powerful coffee flavor melts against his teeth, against the roof of his mouth, and after he’s done battling the brain freeze he can’t help but laugh in shock.

He finishes the first cup of coffee quickly, but he doesn’t throw it away: he heads to the ice cream cart instead and musters up his courage. “How much to fill this with ice cream?”

Another girl, maybe a little older than the strong one in the coffee shop: ice cream scoop in her hands and a bright yellow bandanna knotted into her gold-colored curls. “Depends on what you like, hon, is it ice cream or yogurt?”

“What?” He blinks, and looks into the cart when she motions at it with her scoop, and -- oh, maybe he gets it. Familiar ivory shades in one compartment, and the faint sweet waft of vanilla on the swirling cool mist. 

The other compartment is full of dark-gray peaks, and something about the color makes him nod and ask for it. “Is that the yogurt?”

“Yep. Brave choice,” the girl with the bandanna says, and she fills his cup nearly to the brim, and -- with a wink and a finger across her lips, throws in a handful of mini chocolate chips. 

“I can pay for those too,” he says, grinning back.

“I know you can, I’d rather you didn’t,” she says.

And he hurries back into the line with his coffee and his yogurt and he laughs some more, when he tries the latter and there’s a battle of sweet and sourish flavors on his tongue, weirdly soothing and weirdly appetizing all at once, and he’s grateful for this morning, even though he soon has to set off on the walk and everyone else seems to jostle past him.

Too many people. Too many questions. He lets himself slipstream off to the side, and -- that’s when he catches sight of the girl in the white dress. Spray bottle in her hand, that she aims at the profusion of potted plants on their metalwork displays -- then she mists the cobblestones at her feet and smiles a little.

And turns his way, and he can’t not be polite, and he feels a little awkward when he shrugs at her. 

“Come rest a bit,” she says, laughing a little. Everyone around him seems to be laughing, but they don’t seem unkind, he thinks. 

He smiles and eats the rest of his yogurt and again has to deal with the delicious spiking brain-freeze feeling, and he’s happy to approach the plants and the girl with the spray bottle. “Thanks,” he says, and he leans on the stone wall.

“I’m grateful for the walking tour because people buy things from me,” she says, a little muffled where she’s stepped half back into the vine-painted doorway, “but also I feel sorry for people who don’t seem to be prepared for our weather here. Tourist?” And she indicates his jogging pants.

School-labeled, school-striped -- right, he thinks, those are more than dead giveaways. “Sort of. I mean, it’s not my first time here. But clearly I don’t come here often enough because -- pants.”

“Bring a pair of shorts in your bag, next time you come.”

“Yeah.” 

He’s almost wondering if he should look at the price tags on the pots around him; it wouldn’t be the first time. Maybe his mother will appreciate another weird plant for her collection. Maybe he’ll get lucky and pick out something that actually flowers, or puts out fruit, so she can have something pretty in her garden. 

He’s about to talk to the girl when she turns the sign on her glass door to OPEN and says, “Come in, if you’d like to take a look around.”

“How much for the plants?” he asks, and he stumbles, a little, on the threshold. Dim and inviting shadows everywhere he looks in the tiny shop, all kinds of open boxes and overflowing shelves, a confusion of posters tacked up on almost every inch of wall space. 

But the first thing he really catches sight of are the three plush toys sitting in a neat row next to the old-fashioned cash register: and at first glance they look like three dogs, all bright cartoony grins. 

He sidles closer, and lifts a finger to poke the middle toy right on its bead-black nose. Ruffles and soft spikes of velvety fur, and a red horn in the middle of its forehead, and outstandingly long ears. It’s flanked by a black dog and a white one, wolfish-faced and cute: the black one’s wearing a green sort-of sash, and the white one’s wearing a black cloth knotted around its leg. “I’ll pay you for these.”

The girl smiles and shakes her head, as she taps a button and the cash register clangs open. “You have no idea the number of times I have to answer that question every day,” she says. “And I’m sorry but those toys are not for sale. They’re my good-luck charms.”

“Oh, sorry,” he says, smiling back. “They’re your friends, right, I didn’t know. So no, I don’t want to buy them from you.” He still pats each of the toys on their heads as if they were real companion animals to greet. “They’re really cute though.”

“Aren’t they?”

He’s on his way out to take a second look at the plants when there’s a flash of sunlight entering the shop -- the girl at the counter looks up and says hello to the tall severe-faced man who comes in -- and he’s left staring at a wooden box on a large round table.

Black-metal latches held in place with silver screws, everything gleaming like new -- but even he can tell the box itself has been around for a long time. Weathered-away ink on the sides, curling decorative lines that have been gently worn away by time. The smell of the old paper, shredded bits and pieces still clinging to the inside of the lid -- he smells not just the wood itself but the odd sharpness of the ripped edges, like the smell of his father’s library, like leather and cracking paste and the burr of the gold-leaf lettering on the spines of the books.

There’s a smaller box inside, and this one he lifts out without thinking. Small smooth bronze-colored knob on this smaller lid. He pulls on it without thinking -- and the box opens for him, and it’s not empty.

Ribbon in black threaded with silver and gold, and a design of something very much like a sword -- though not like the one that the tour leader had been wearing. Broad blade and something complicated about the handle, something like old-fashioned motorcycles. He almost expects the sword-design to glow.

The ribbon is tied around a sheaf of brown paper and -- something else. There’s a sharp corner poking out of a hole in the paper, yellowed material and the outer edges of something else. 

And something in him twinges, like a warning, and so -- he drops the sheaf back into the smaller box, and brings that to the girl, and he feels the flush in his cheeks when he asks, “How much for this one?”

“Is there anything in it?”

“Just -- ” He opens the box, helplessly, and the girl tuts softly at the ribbon and at the package.

But she says, “Fifteen?”

“Ten,” he counters.

“Thirteen.”

“Twelve and a half,” he says. “And that’s my last offer.”

“Good, you drive a hard bargain,” the girl says, suddenly breaking out into a bright smile. “Twelve dollars please.”

“That’s a good price,” the man with the severe face murmurs as he walks past. “Good find, kid.”

“Not a kid,” he says, almost on reflex.

“That’s what you look like from where I’m standing.”

“He likes to pretend he’s old old, but don’t be fooled, it’s just his face.” The girl is still laughing when she wraps his box in paper, and then drops it into a cotton tote bag. “Thanks for your business.”

“Is there any point in me,” and he tilts his head in the direction of the door that’s still swinging shut, “still going on the walking tour?”

He hears her hum, as she crosses her arms. “Depends, but if you’re really asking me, you’ll go with them until they explain the statue of those four guys walking.”

“Explain what exactly,” he asks, and he tries to juggle his empty cups, his backpack, and his impulse purchase, and he’s not entirely successful, he thinks.

“Explain why they have no faces,” the girl says.

*

His ears are still ringing from the sough and the songs of the seaside, when he finally makes it to his hostel -- to the cramped and cozy capsule-room that has the remainder of his luggage, the jacket thrown onto the pillows, his scuffed loafers tucked into a corner. 

The tour leader had led him, and everyone else, once around the statue of four towering forms, four people walking with their arms and shoulders almost brushing -- on first glance he’d thought they had all been connected to each other -- and had offered a short explanation. The coats had been rendered in detail, the boots had all been pointing -- walking -- in the same direction, but the heads were weathered shapes, nothing to hint at hair or -- as the girl in the shop had mentioned -- faces at all.

And he’d broken away from the group, afterwards, heading back to the beach-side strip of wooden decks connecting various stores and restaurants and brightly-painted attractions, and he’d sat in a corner booth of the diner and picked his way through a cheeseburger and an order of loaded fries. He’d asked for a refill on his apple juice, and ultimately decided against picking up a slice of strawberry pie. 

He still has the letters he’d written at that table with him, and he’ll have to remember to mail them in the morning, or whenever he wakes up, and before he goes to the beach for the day.

A letter to his mother to tell her how he’s feeling. A letter to his father to inquire after his health. A letter to his cousin to let her know he’s making good on the promise he’d made her, before she’d shipped out to basic training and the life of a soldier.

He still doesn’t know why he doesn’t tell any of them about the box he’s bought. About the things inside the box.

Maybe it’s something he wants to keep for himself, he thinks, and he goes to take a shower and brush his teeth -- and only after then does he allow himself to draw the curtain across the side of his capsule-room, and turn on the lamp, so he can see clearly.

The ribbon pulls smoothly free, when he tugs on one end of it, and he’s a little surprised that the material of it feels so crisp and smooth against his fingertips, and he almost gives in to the temptation to tie it around his neck like a collar. He lays it aside instead, and reaches for his pocketknife, and he finally slits the brown paper open.

Squares of paper spill onto his lap. Yellowing frames of blank space around -- faces, landscapes, strange-looking animals and -- are those frogs?

They are, as he pulls that particular photograph out of the pile, and the frog is a strange melange of green and other neon-bright colors. It seems to have a nonplussed expression on the odd angles of its face, and it doesn’t seem to want to escape the hands that are holding on to it -- human hands, one wrapped in black material that still leaves the fingertips exposed. 

There’s something so -- human -- in the frog’s face and -- he can’t help but collapse onto his pillow, can’t help but giggle and snort and then -- the laugh bursts out of him, full-voiced, full-throated, and he laughs until the tears fall from his eyes, fall toward his temples, and it takes him a long time to catch his breath and he’s still snickering when he takes a picture of the frog-picture and sends it to the various devices owned by his family, with a caption to match:

_I hope this makes you laugh like I just did. I haven’t laughed that hard in a while. I’m wiping tears from my eyes, I’m about to choke because I laughed too much. Please laugh at this frog with me._

He sets the picture of the frog aside, and he picks up the next image that catches his eye.

There are at least four people in the picture, he’s pretty sure of that, even though all he sees are their interlinked arms, hands clasped around wrists. Four people with their hands joined in the shape of a hollow square, their hands forming the corners. The hand at the bottom of the square even looks familiar -- it looks like one of the hands that had been holding the frog. That bare hand is clasped around a tattooed wrist, around the inked shapes and curves of feathers; and his eyes follow the rest of them, the four in the picture, counter-clockwise. The sleeve-end of something like an elegant coat, or perhaps the jacket of a businessman’s suit. A bare arm, studded with freckles and dirt-stains. 

He turns that picture over, but the back is blank and stained only with old chemicals, old water-drops.

Landscape in the next frame, showing off a calmly rippling sea at high noon, stark blue of the sky reflected in the stark blue of the water, and positioned exactly between those two spaces, rising teeth- and wing-shapes of old rock and old stone, in the form of an island. A barren place, as he only sees it in shades of gray. Something about the island makes his heart lurch sick and sullen in his chest, and he quickly flips it over so he doesn’t have to see it.

Bird-like animals in the next one, their wing-feathers trimmed short -- but that doesn’t seem to harm them at all, not in the way they’ve been captured at a full-tilt run, reins streaming behind them, lights hanging from their harnesses. Saddles, empty; magnificent tails flattened out by their speed.

He flips through, looking for faces, and -- here is a dimly-lit shot, here are tables and chairs scattered about, but why do the walls seem to be made of canvas, and why do the floors seem to be made of hard-packed earth? Why are the visible lamps turned down so low? 

He counts the faces -- ten people all told, and they’re all posed like they’re trying to fit into the shot, but there’s something about the smiles that seems strained to him. Something about the lingering visibility of the lines in all of their faces -- even in that of the little boy who’s more or less right in the forefront of the shot. Why does the boy seem like he might run, any moment now? Why are his shoulders so tense?

And his eyes rove over the others and -- he picks up the photograph of the hands, again, and maybe he might be able to match the hands to some of the people in the group shot. The three girls he rules out, gently; the same for the two older men, one as tall as the man he’d met in the shop, and one with bent shoulders and a crooked grin. Last is the boy.

That leaves the four youngish men scattered throughout the shot.

Two crouched in front, framing the little boy between them: he identifies one of them by the glove on his right hand, which is the same as one of the gloves in the other picture. The one with the heavy wristwatch must be the bare-handed person, the one whose hand had formed the bottom edge of the hollow square.

As for the others: the man with the tattoos, standing on the left of the picture, is pretty distinct. That means that the sleeve in the suit jacket belongs to the man standing on the opposite side, in the dress shirt; he simply doesn’t seem to be wearing that item in the group shot.

They’re all smiling, all four of them in various ways, but they all look somber, too; and a faint pang, like pain, catches him by the heart when he runs his fingertip over the face of the bare-handed man. Why does he look so tired? Why does he look so sad and happy at the same time? Why are his shoulders bent down, so he’s almost a copy of the man wearing the crooked grin?

Quickly, heavy-hearted, he shuffles through the rest of the pictures, understanding the shapes and the lines of the faces of the four guys he’s identified. Now that he knows what they look like, he can recognize them so much more easily, in one captured moment after another. Four shadows running long on a paved road. Four sets of trouser-legs ending in four pairs of shoes, all seated along the counter of a diner -- not at all like the one he’d been in earlier -- all of them muddy and travel-stained. Four faces, younger in some of the photos and older in some of the others: they’re older, leaner, more worn in the group shot, and then they are younger and almost exuberant in another picture that shows the four of them posing around a sleek car, all long lines and nearly tangible weight. He can almost hear the purr of the engine, the leather of the seats, the energetic and bouncing rhythm of the music pouring from the radio.

Last in the entirety of the pile, as if it had been buried away, is one more photograph for him to find. It’s marked with a scrap of the same sword-decorated ribbon. The ribbon is pinned to the once-white frame, and he handles it carefully so the pin doesn’t fall out.

With a jolt he recognizes the coats on all four of them, in these dark and moody shots, with the lighting so diffuse and muffled as to be nearly nonexistent.

What had happened to them, now that they were dressed in the frock-coats, now that they were walking in chains of silver and gold? He thinks he can imagine the heaviness of their footsteps, walking away from the camera this time, and -- he thinks back to the sculpted figures without their faces. Sees the tensed fists in stone -- exactly the same as the tensed fists in the photograph. Sees the obsessive closeness of their cluster, just short of holding each other’s hands as they moved forward.

Of all the things he’d taken out of the box -- all the moments that had been captured on paper and emulsions and chemicals -- this is the shot that leaves him moved, leaves him breathless with emotion. He can recognize the four figures from their hair, from the respective shapes of their bodies, but there’s also a kind of sorrow that he can’t put a name to, hanging heavy around them with their backs bent, and still moving. 

Still together.

He gathers all of the photos back into their bundle, back into the brown paper, back into the knotted length of the ribbon he’d found them in -- all except for the last one. His heart is thudding in his chest like he’s just been running for his life, or like he’s just been crying his heart out.

And now that he can peer at it without being distracted by everything else -- the closeness of the four of them, almost the huddle, is revealed.

They’re all bent around the one with the bare hands. Twisted towards him.

And as for him, that figure at the center of this composition -- the center of this group -- he is walking with his fists splayed out slightly to the sides, as though to spread his presence out to the other three.

*

He gets stuck in an endless crowd, the next day.

Crowd that mills quietly around him, hushed and morning-lit, as he heads towards the counters at the post office. People buying postcards, filling them out at the long standing tables. A group of teenagers looking skeptically at the posters advertising various sheets of stamps, and then a little more enthusiastically at a display of rolls of decorated adhesive tape. Little boys and girls in preschool smocks and hats, clutching at each other’s hands and waddling in a long meandering line behind their minders, who are telling them about the post office and the various people walking around in uniforms. 

He dodges past the counters for sending and receiving packages -- stares at a girl who walks past him, clutching a plush toy in the shape of an anthropomorphic cactus. It still has scraps of packaging tape stuck to its stubby legs -- and he steps up instead to the counter for sending mail.

But the man at the counter points him over to the steel vending machines along the wall instead, and he has to peer at the touchscreen displays and their idle videos to understand what’s going on, and -- he buys a packet of standard airmail envelopes, fumbling for change in his pocket, for his letters. Sleep-slow, he fumbles for change to work the vending machines, and he’s a little red-faced when he’s done with his errand, and he wonders how long it’s going to take before the letters arrive at their different destinations.

The crowd follows him -- or perhaps it never really stopped forming around him -- as he makes his way to the beach, and to a breakfast of grilled meat skewers and flatbread. The only place for him to sit is at a long counter running parallel to the shoreline, and he tries the five different sauce mixtures he gets with his order, and decides he prefers the gravy-style sauce and the red one with a slight bite of spice, and all around him are conversations, rising and falling.

He’s torn right down the middle between wanting to join a conversation, wanting to just listen, and wanting to escape the whole rising cloud of noise, and he forces himself to finish his meal, even after he loses his appetite.

His path to the sand leads him past a boardwalk of a small carnival, and the jangling song of clamoring bells from various games, past the singsong shouts of barkers inviting people to play for prizes.

He’s not the only person to stop and stare at the girl who accepts a gaudily-beribboned hammer from one of those barkers -- the girl from the coffee shop, he realizes, right in the instant where she begins her swing, lifts the hammer over her head and then brings it down with all her might onto the spring-loaded platform at her feet and -- over her head the bell shrieks out a shrill victory and the girl laughs, accepts her prize gratefully, and -- immediately turns around and gives it to a little boy in a wheelchair, wide-brimmed hat pulled down over his fair skin and his light-gold hair.

Purple-plush fur and a black mane on the toy, tail and horns and X-shapes for its eyes, and the boy laughs and shakes the girl’s hand with both of his own.

He can’t help but laugh, too, and he feels a little better when he steps down to the sand that immediately drifts onto his bare feet, onto his surf-shoes. 

The crowd on the beach is the one he’s expected, and he’s grateful just to get the small space that he does, just out of the edge of overhanging shade, of the shadow-footprint cast by one of the lifeguards’ shacks dotted up and down the shoreline.

Smell of lanolin and lotion, thick on his skin where he’s slathering on the heavy sunscreen, and -- he thinks he almost recognizes a shape walking past him, a shape that he’d dreamed of. 

But the person he thinks might have been one of the four men in the photos he’d found and bought yesterday is -- actually not that person. 

As his eyes follow the shadow that’s walking away, in a swirl of shirt-tails sent askew by the wind, he comes to a slow realization:

He’s been half-expecting three of the men in the photographs to come up to him, and say hello, and -- what makes him think that’s going to happen? He’s not the fourth guy in the pictures.

He doesn’t even look like that fourth guy, the one they had all seemed to hover around. 

So why had he dreamed of years of angry, devouring darkness?

Why had he spent the night half-reaching out for three other presences?

Why had he been looking for familiar silhouettes in the crowd that still ebbs and murmurs around him?

And instead of finding answers to those questions he -- makes a hollow in the sand, and spreads out his small beach blanket, and he lies down, and closes his eyes.

Tries to sleep -- 

He opens his eyes to whispers and a strange whistling song, that makes the hairs on the back of his neck rise and stay standing up, stiff and fearful --

Before he can think about it he’s making his way back to the statue that had only been a point of fleeting interest during the walking tour -- he’s making his way back to those faceless forms, to the shoulders bowed with grief. 

And his phone rings at him, from the pocket of his shorts. Name on the screen that he reads in disbelief and -- he swipes to answer, and asks, “Mom. How did you know?”

“Are you all right? Do you need someone to talk to?”

He nods, even though she can’t see him. “Yeah. I think. Spooked.”

“What’s scaring you?” He’s grateful, again, because she isn’t telling him to stop being scared. Instead she’s trying to talk him through to the source of his fears. 

He still doesn’t tell her about the pictures; instead, he just says, “Bad dreams.”

It’s just an evasion; he’s not lying.

He’s not sure he knows what his mind is doing with the idea of -- 

He’s not sure he wants to go there, to the very root of his thoughts since yesterday -- 

And so he’s grateful when Mom says, stern and gentle, “Breathe.”

He tries to, to the steady cadence of her voice, as she counts for him.

“Thanks,” he says, after a long minute.

Clouds overhead, darker than yesterday’s, briefly blotting out the sun and its warmth.

“Better?” Mom asks.

“A little,” he says. “I don’t know why I still get scared.”

“We all do, and you know that,” is her response. “I can worry for you and for your cousin and for your father, can’t I? That’s another form of being scared.”

“I haven’t thought about it that way before. But Mom. Question.”

“Yes?”

“What’s it like to be the one that others are worried for?”

She doesn’t answer.

He hears her thoughtful breathing, slow, considering. “That was a long time ago, for me,” she says, eventually. “When I was going to have you. Your father’s friends were all worried about me. They’d drop in unexpectedly. They’d call me, and ask me if I needed any help. It was nice to have them around but I didn’t want them to tear up their lives for my sake. I didn’t want them to get all bent out of shape because of me.”

“Why did they do it?” he manages to ask. He’s stuck on how she’s said it so neatly. _I didn’t want them to tear up their lives for my sake._

“I wish I knew.” Mom’s sigh is a long and weary sound. “I still don’t know. Maybe I can’t figure it out. They weren’t my friends back then, or I didn’t become friends with them until after. But they were -- they must have all made the same choice. They wanted me to pull through. They wanted you to be okay, of course, since you were rather involved in the whole thing. But it was me they were all talking to. They would call your father and tell him to hand the phone to me, so they could talk to me about things. Ask me out to dinner, or ask me what I wanted for dinner. Drop in to leave things for babies to use. They gave me -- things I couldn’t use because they weren’t suited for you.” Soft brief laugh. “I don’t know.”

“Then I don’t know why I’m spooked either.”

As soon as he says it he knows he’s not entirely telling the truth, either -- but in his defense, he’s only realizing this one, slowly, bubbling up gently in the farthest reaches of his mind. Organic growth, like a seed being coaxed along, surrounded in soil and light and water, nurtured into springing up and into actual living.

His mother’s words are the catalyst, and he remembers:

The flash of courage and foolishness and every possible fear a young man could possibly carry within himself, within his mind. Sparks in brown eyes and the appearance of a broad back before him. A substitute target, a protector -- nothing at all like a wall because he was alive, bloodied and alive --

The flash of gentleness in sharp keen eyes. Green obscured in the flowing shadows of a night that was still safe. A night that was cradled in blue-inscribed magic, and the thousands of millions of stars in the sky, unfolding just for him and for the kind warmth at his side -- 

The flash of determination, wiping away self-loathing, wiping away secrets. The blazing lights of a hotel catching in warm blue-violet eyes like jewels. Tears, and the trails of them that were scattered by a joke and an enduring affection that was sweet and tempered and good -- 

For him. All of this, all of them, for him.

And they were alive and vibrant and powerful in their own respective rights, and yet -- they gave of themselves, without thinking, without second-guessing, without hesitating.

They were his.

And he in turn had been theirs.

Their faces, their tears, the last thing he’d seen, in the disintegrating light and ashes of that black ring -- 

That he’s no longer wearing. That no longer exists. It’s not on his hand. 

And with that same hand, marked only by sunlight, he reaches out to the statues, and for some reason he wants to -- make contact with the stone -- 

He does, and blacks out.

*

_**Chirp!** _

_Where is this place? Why does he know all these swirling colors, this blue blank world, these whispers not quite breaking through the silence?_

_**Chirp!** _

_And -- “You,” he says, and he feels the weight of fur and ears and tail on him, paws scrambling happily up his leg and his torso. He knows the weight that comes to rest on his shoulder. No longer a stuffed toy._

_Carbuncle. This is Carbuncle. Living, fluffing out its fur proudly. “I remember you,” he says._

_**Chirp!** _

_This time he can interpret the sound -- it’s a question. It’s a reminder. **Do you remember them now? Do you remember yourself now?**_

_He looks down at himself and -- he’s not surprised to be dressed in the simple, elegant black suit. He thinks he’d seen it in the photographs and --_

_The thought rocks him, even in this unchanging world, this solemn crystal-shattered no-space. The photographs. The statues. The fear in his dreams, and the lingering idea of familiar presences, just out of reach, just out of the corner of his eye -- the shadows and the empty spaces in the world, in the shapes of --_

_“The guys,” he says, out loud. “Gladio. Ignis. Prompto. They’re missing -- are they okay? Are they doing fine?”_

_**Chirp!** _

_So much to be said in such a short sound! **The guys are okay, they’re not missing, they’re just looking for you. They want to see you again, too.**_

_“How do I find them? I didn’t even know I was going to start looking for them. I miss them.”_

_**Chirp!** _

_Which means: **They miss you too! Let’s go find them!**_

*

And he crashes back into himself: himself in his board shorts, in his tacky red shirt, sand clinging to his knees. Tears clinging to his cheeks and all the fear splintering away, shivering off his shoulders like it’s a weight he no longer needs to carry. No longer suffers from, where it’s pins and needles and a thousand crystal-colored sword-blades living under his skin, living gathered around his heart and ready to pierce it through with every breath and every passing second.

He’s on his knees before the statues and he -- he laughs, and -- the first thing he does is reach out to the hand of the form that must represent him, the one that’s in the middle, the one that all the others are carefully, subtly canted towards. 

“It’s gonna be okay,” he says, very softly, into the wind. “You’re here. We’re here.”

And then, maybe a little too eagerly, he reaches out to the other three, and over those stone-veined, wind-scoured hands he lingers, imagining the real warmth of them, the real life that must be in them, if he’s carrying it in his chest, and in every inch of his heart and soul.

Gladio’s hand, and Ignis’s, and Prompto’s -- and to them, to their faces he remembers from that other life, that he hasn’t yet seen in this one, he says, “Wait for me. I’m going to find you.”

~~the end~~  
_**new game +** _

**Author's Note:**

> ninemoons42 on Tumblr: [@ninemoons42-lestallumhaven](http://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/) or [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)


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